Here (in case you were wondering) is where Damian McBride comes in. Did he come out of Peterhouse any more virtuous than when he went in? If he did, then he was starting from an implausibly low base. And what about all those Oxbridge or Russell Group graduates who flocked into the City of London in the 1990s? Do we have any reason to suppose that they behaved more responsibly than their colleagues who brought the global financial system to the edge of the abyss, indirectly causing millions to lose their livelihoods? I doubt that we do.   

British universities have in their hands for several years hundreds of thousands of the brightest and best — the rulers and leaders of tomorrow  from all around the world. Do their students leave any more virtuous, with any better sense of what's really valuable, than when they first arrived? If not, why not? I don't think we can afford the luxury of morally silent institutions — especially not elite educational ones.

But what values and virtues may institutions own and promote in a liberal, multi-cultural society? Well, contrary to what moral relativists tell us, some moral views are universal; they do transcend cultures. In August I made my first visit to Hong Kong to attend a conference on Chinese and Western views of what makes war just, and there I was surprised to discover that classical Confucian and neo-Confucian views of the "just war" are remarkably similar to those found in the Latin West — notwithstanding the fact that Chinese and Western civilisations developed almost entirely independently of each other until the 18th century. We shouldn't exaggerate our moral differences.

Having said that, there's no escaping the fact that we have to make ethical choices. If we go with Confucius, we will regard deference to authority as a virtue, but probably not rebellion against it. If we go with the ancient Hebrew prophets of the Old Testament, we'll regard care for the weak and the poor as a virtue, but not if we go with Nietzsche or Ayn Rand. If we go with Jesus, we'll regard humility, compassion and forgiveness as virtues, but not, I think, if we go with Aristotle. We have to decide to stand somewhere and to justify our stance as best we can. Of course, we won't all agree on exactly where to position ourselves, but we can't afford not to talk about it and we can't afford not to decide. Besides, to stand confidently in one place needn't stop us humbly learning from another. Indeed, the greater the self-confidence, the greater the readiness to borrow.

Many of our most important institutions in Britain have a Christian foundation. Most Oxbridge colleges and many of our most prestigious schools have Christian chapels. So I'll conclude with some thoughts about the role of the worldview of Christianity in helping encourage wider moral articulacy. For sure, it isn't the only worldview that can do so, but it is among those that can. And they are a finite set.

Christianity has a very high esteem for human beings, affirming our special dignity as made in the image of God — a dignity intensified by God's own donning of human flesh in the Incarnation. According to this high vision, human beings are not merely the random result of the blind operation of physical forces, nor their activity simply determined by genes or chemistry, nor their asserted significance just so much desperate whistling in the enveloping cosmic dark. No, in Christian eyes humans are the creatures of a benevolent divine intelligence, which has striven through natural evolution to bring about individuals who flourish in freely investing themselves in what's really valuable.